The Importance of Spontaneous Cases

THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH Responsibility for the contents of any article appearing in the Jovezwan rests entirely with the contributor and not with the A.5.P.R. i VOLUME XLVII JULY * 1953 Number 3 LK ee CONTENTS The Importance of Spontancous Cases : : : r 89 ” Gardner Murphy Robert Chambers and the “Supernatural” - i . 104 Milton Millhauser Reviews: A Philosophical Scrutiny of Religion . ; ‘ : . . . 1g by C. J. Ducasse Gerald Heard The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism . . F A : : . 122 by Herbert Thurston, S. J. C. J. Ducasse The Pope of the Occult r ; Fi 7 ‘ . . . 135 by D. H. Raweliffe J. B. Rhine Talapas and Spiritualism . . ‘ ‘ ; 5 " ~ ey ¥ i. Hettinger Emanuel K. Schwartz Enigma, presented by Mrs. Louis K, Anspucher z i - : . 129 William O. Stevens Correspondence ; Fi . ; 5 ; : ; . . i » Obituary: Mr. G. N. M. Tyrrell : . - " PF . - . 232 Ee The Importance of Spontaneous Cases’ GARDNER MURPHY l am going to talk to you this evening about a problem in which every man and woman, if interested, can take part. Perhaps this branch of psychical research can meet the democratic ideal of par- ticipation by all, each in terms of his or her interest and capacity to find time and a way of working in the investigation. We are concern- ing ourselves this evening, Professor Hart and |, with the problem of spontaneous cases—cases which belong to our field of psychical research but do not call for the special equipment of a laboratory. I Classes of Spontaneous Cases Now, what do we include under the term “spontaneous cases?” I could not possibly cover examples of the entire area, but I am going to devote myself primarily to the following groups of experiences. First, spontaneous telepathy, the exchange of ideas or feelings between persons or, as we shall see, between animals and persons, under conditions which patently belong to another realm of discourse from that of the use of the sense organs. In the second place, precognition, the capacity to make contacts with events which have not yet occurred. 1 This paper was read by Dr. Murphy at a Meeting of the Society held on January 22, 1953

90 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Researé Third, apparitions, in the broad sense in which Mr. Tyrrell used term in his extensive and brilliant analysis of apparitions ten yea ago*: to include both crisis experiences, for example, impressior of a person at the time of his death at a distant point, and the perennii or recurrent apparitions to which we may apply the term, “haunting or “ghost” or “revenant” and many other appellations. And then y shall include, also briefly, the physical phenomena which occur spor taneously, such as the cases of unexplained raps, lights, movement of objects. To be concrete, we shall cite examples which would giv the general character of each of the spontaneous phenomena wit which we are concerned. [ will quote, as an illustration of telepathy, Rider Haggard’ account of a very strange nightmare of his in which he felt oppresset as if he were being forced down by an unbearable pressure, awakenin; with the horror of it still present. The body of his daughter’s do was found a little later. Apparently, he had been shaken or kno et off a railroad trestle into the river below. Apparently, the death ¢ the dog, preceded probably by a struggle, had been close enough if time to suggest that the dying animal had somehow registered on the sleeping mind of Mr. Maggard2 As an illustration of precognition, one might cite a very curiou British account of collective impressions in which a group of people all observed a horse-drawn vehicle, the individual horse being very clearly scen, and the occupants of the carriage recognized so that they were about to be greeted. Actually, they were not there. A woman came in from outside who had seen the whole equipage go by was frightened because they hadn’t spoken to her. Then, actually, a half-hour later, all of this was fulfilled. Ap- parently, the first impression had been crystallized a half-hour or so before the actual appearance of the visitors; there had been a joint experience referring to what occurred a half-hour later. In this case, as in many of our cases of precognition, there is the possibility that telepathy may have been a more basic explanation, and a possi- bility that telepathy and precognition may be combined. In general, the precognitive dream has come in for a special amou of attention among us, since a pretty large number, at least of the good precognitive cases, are dreams which had been recorded or recounted so that they make better evidence when the final facts are available. But I would also mention as precognitive, Dr. Walter 2G. N. M. Tyrrell, “Apparitions,” London, 1942. J Ibid., p. 53; also Proc. S.P.R., Vol. XXXIII, 1923, pp. 219-231. * Ibid., pp. 45-46; also Phantasms of the Living, Vol. I, pp. 97-99. Seventh Myers Memorial Lecture, S.P.R., _a female figure come and go, The Importance of Spontaneous Cases 91 i ince’ i d particularly striking, ‘ranklin Prince’s case, which I personally find pa n Be ames he had been studying and who had some sort of peculiar second sight, She sketched a drawing of a woman’s figure with gt hair and with blood pouring down her face oe et - pe rds, “struck down.” “K. B.,” some weeks later, to gg Prince, was actually struck down and gashed in the face. The whole thing, anchored upon a flashing impression of an ni mobile which was not fully enough recorded at the time, sates j however, a precognition of a serious accident from an ae i % realized in considerable detail to the seu of the recognition of the ‘pe of injury and where it was on the body. Pie ea dlaceeion of an apparition, I can hardly do better than refer to the long recurrent haunting of a British home in ai at least six different individuals, most of them Se re 2 : ——— hem neighbors, over a period of s¢ s, gun asap - frequently remaining in -_ sight a edicine, who gives us time. The young woman, a student of m ” vaphesior fob pretty scientific study of ip p cabaes eget 2 . . * * w it over and over again, tried to corner it until the hgure, ; i - he that she decided to escape, would disappear. So hard headed was s to teat the materiality of the phantasm by inserting: the ends : os strings into small pellets of marine glue and attaching one pel tt the wall and the other to the banister, the strings being thus stre' across the stairs. Under these conditions ag a ge Loo ree h the strings, leaving them intact. So far 1s = aetyoe! idea Fis extravagant fantasy which a frightened or en turbed mind may produce that we have a calm and objective stu aA of this apparition, almost a member of the household for a pert ‘i nage an illustration of physical phenomena, still spontaneous rather than experimental, I would mention the egg os which I hope many of you have read, reported by ae ale, a Montreal? This is one of the people not afraid to have se re known (it is always better so). Dr. Schwartz talked wil oe Hale; I talked with her last summer. This is an experience : e ? a certain clock had been especially associated with her son. T S oc itself would be a symbol, he said, when he left to join the or Canadian Air Force. So long as he was alive she felt the clock wou go on running. 5 Gardner Murphy, “An Approach to Precognition,” Jovrnat A.S.P.R., Vol. XLII, 1948, p. 5. 6 Miss R. © en : Vee ee Schwartz, “The Study of Spontaneous Psi Experiences, Journat A.S.P.R., Vol. XLIIT, 1949, pp. 128-130: “Record of a Haunted House,” Proc. S.P.R., Vol.

92 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Researe When a cable was received i Wi announcing that th v — and the terror of death mean ts face he toe Mr ae a hs ois " in son’s clock and she cried, “If W ee ae sc woul "” ia th si a ce Sot d stop!” Upon this the clock made a b tie a7 a isi i cape also verifies the fact. As yo read our J AL in recent years, bee ford . gilesen. timepieces similarly related See eed ; Cau “ the problem of continuity beyond the death cri is pe a y, if we are interested in spontancous cases, we find ras 5 ge ne ey almost every problem of psychical ‘Tesearch v -~! epathy. We find precognition. We find the recurrent a peat connected with catastrophe or with death and some cases which at least on their face, sugges inui . 2 : the same way after death as ieee —— II Why More Cases? N ‘ . cei “a ps point a good many people are going to ask v ney uh x gana But haven't you been telling us for a long ae we fe ly ought to try to get experimental control f phenomena? Isn’t it desirable to find out the exact conditions unde# which something ha F : iponkeaieak wd ss ppens and not just gather in more and more Yes. And I would invite you speciall i nalogy y to consider we we i oa here between our science and velit other oe ve to deal with both spontaneous and experimental : ra situation in geology. vould —— fe = if he had no laboratory ? If ee tet, Pict: —— if bs on € optical properties of crystals, could not be carried! through exper ratory, if these problems could not be approached —— serwasies techniques, where would geology be? On the ee, in = would geology be if it did not have spontaneous ei ae ct You don't have experimental control ota = , but what you do is to have your very delicate gpd ise niques ready. And when the spontaneous occurrence wr tone , you have a carefully made, systematic study of the ‘gi on of those shocks at different points in the earth, v ch as you have the different observers of an apparition aconting he it appeared to each of them at a different point. That is to ay a talk to you about three of them The Importance of Spontaneous Cases 93 attempt to construct a rational interpretation of a phenomenon by being ready when the phenomenon occurs. The same is true, of course, in the science of astronomy, in which you don’t have experimental control. But you do have a careful and well-organized way of studying the spontaneous events like, let us say, the sudden appearance of a new star in the heavens, which we don’t today regard as a portent of disaster, but which we see in the light of the systematic knowledge of astronomical science. I believe, therefore, that our job in psychical research consists in having a plan with reference to the gathering of spontaneous cases—a systematic, careful interpretation, the best we can think out—and then testing our hypothesis against fresh facts. There have been quite a number of serious interpretations, in fact I would say, several bril- liant, systematic interpretations of spontaneous phenomena. I shall this evening. And these are always useful, partly in guiding us toward the better observation of new spontaneous cases, SO that as we have a new precognitive dream or see an apparition or even have a trivial telepathic experience, we see how it fits in. We build these phenomena into rational orders and classes the way you classify animals or birds or plants into natural groups, and then if a strange bird appears that doesn’t fit your classi- fication, you learn something. It forces you to a new category, a new way of thinking. Or, if you have a theory, you can always check up to see whether it fits the facts. You have a theory about the migration of birds, and if your song sparrows don't come back in the third week in February, you begin to ask yourself : “What is it about the birds or the season?” And you revise your ideas about the migration of birds until you find a way that fits the facts. So it isn’t ever quite sound to say that we have too many cases or to say: “Let's simply get down to the classification of what we already have.” The two things go hand in hand: the systematic interpretation of the cases we already have always calls also for the gathering of new cases which throw new light on the nature of these phenomena. I might give you an illustration of the extraordinary richness of the material if I quote a couple of cases that show how far we are from understanding these phenomena in the light of the cliché that I mentioned a minute ago. Through the various collections of cases in the past—among them the two great British collections, Phantasms of the Living® and the “Census of Hallucinations” ;? Dr. Richet’s 8E. Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and F. Podmore, Phantasms of the Living, 2 Vols., Triibner & Co., London, 1886. 9“Report on the Census of Hallucinations,” pp. 25-422. Proc. S.P.R., Vol. X, 1894,

94 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Researe collection’? and some others in France; Dr. Walter Franklin Prince collection ;!! and the collection Mrs. Dale has made here at ¢ American Society!*—we have developed a certain idea about telepath as involving the emergence of a conscious idea, perhaps as the repr sentative of the conscious idea of some other person. All right, take the following case now, and see if this fits. ‘h father of a young man in the service awakes early one morning. H is unusually restless and spends an hour walking the floor. Then sets his son’s watch by the clock but not quite accurately, He hai been carrying the watch but never kept it running. He sets it at 8:17 Why? No special reason. He is depressed and worried but aware of what he is worrying about. He sets the watch at 8:17. motions are somewhat mechanical—just something to do. He do see his son crashing in flames. He doesn’t h “The end has come.” Not at all. What he does is to register 8:17. And then the fatefu message comes through. And it turns out that 8:17 by his time is correct, with allowance of the hour’s difference for the region in which his son died—exactly an hour’s difference between the death which was at 8:17 and the 8:17 recorded in his own zone." What we have then here is a motor impulse combined with a vague idea. Is this telepathy ? Well, if this is telepathy, then the term covers an extraordinary range of phenomena. That is to say, we begin to get the idea that interactions between human beings are enormously richer and more complicated than those which are represented b my thinking of an orange and then calling up on the ‘phone and you say the idea you thought of was an orange. At this kind of conscious level, one might say that what we call naive telepathy is only one of the many phenomena which it is our business to study, and the deeper implications of which are to be investigated. I just got a letter from a correspondent in Oklahoma City, a woman whom I met when I was lecturing at the University of Okla- homa more than a year ago (and I just had time to get permission from her to present her experience). I thought it would give you an idea of the kind of thing that pours in all the time. Most of the cases come to Mrs. Dale. In this particular-instance, it came to me because T had met this woman at the time I lectured there. ear any words saying sat Charles Richet, L’Avenir et la Prémonition, Editions Montaigne, Paris, "IW. F, Prince, “Human Experiences,” Bulletin XIV, Boston S.P.R., 1931, 12L, A. Dale, “A Series of Spontaneous Cases in the Tradition of Phantasms of the Living,” Journar A.S.P.R., Vol. XLV. 1951, pp. 85-101. 13L. A. Dale, “Spontaneous Experiences Reported by a Group of Experi- ental Subjects,” Jourwat A.S.P.R., Vol. XL, 1946, pp. 55-63. The Importance of Spontaneous Cases 95 ing i i f a store and " looking in the show window o . ape "fe astists “supplies with easel, tubes ee a pyr it had Te te oe cheariiag. hh I realized sud- a Ee items ae lly belonged to me and had been t all these items actually ig im pron ag os a gift nee my daughter. I resented the merchan i ed them for display. "i ernie at took place on Sunday morning. Liv a : to a certain movie that afternoon. But when sete pills Tchateed my mind and I went to another ee ace Pa ‘das American in Paris. Midway in the picture pig arp in which a wealthy woman gives to a young artis i the sense of obligation. : i ee : hye Bia of the easel with the Saar of tome o Rise the white paint tube open and, in fact, the ars peo duplication of m dream which I had interp: ion display five hours earlier. an —_— “Then a couple of weeks ago, while I was sive a Ae looking at a newsreel, a sharp odor of the kin ot —— ave we used . kes sing eM Pladig hs it. Following ousness. z oe aaa gow was a short in technicolor. It peat ay a ‘ion experience in California waters, then paar gt bess actually an exploration cruise for a pecig acl Se California Institute of Oceanog graphy. ee a oy age i were views of the cruising party comng Roope Boi lar ak waters, and soon a view of one mem et i rea bottle cauiintiie a ‘specimen and grimacing as er rm bs ge her nose and indicated the unpleasantness . ee a. in tee odor was perceived fifteen minutes — , need until this scene, when it suddenly left as 1 § . ited Now, of course, the first thing = a * in © 3a Pe : rati i , records made, 0 SE eis ae told. We have followed for — uc - Pole : f saying: “Anything that looks like a parenorte -_ “a leat i" aes us and we will deal with these material . u i i set ends the best authenticated evidential — K “ = Sead which are not evidentially of the highest he oS ma) nevertheless throw some light on the ee a ar a t these as cases of telepathy aanuraes aot npcsmngeltion? Well, if you ae on pled category, I would probably call them precognitive. ut ane would say: “This isn’t telling us oral Sec doing here is to take a ittle —in tl ; iiaeenion of ihe sil oot which comes without any logical meaning

96 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Researe at the time. This is a tag, so to speak, like a little symbol that appe: in our half-waking or our dream experience, and later on we mi be able to understand this. We may see through the symbol, as the interpretation by Joseph of Pharaoh’s dream. We may be ab only to “half-guess” it, but very often it is only by the systemat gathering of such cases that we begin to understand the extraordinar richness of the symbolic apparatus, on which, very largely, we dependent when a thing as complex and difficult as telepathic munication is involved. I would guess, then, that the collection of these cases in which w If one still asks, “Why are new spontaneous cases useful ?” I woul reply: “They challenge our theories.” When people have begun te organize an hypothesis—and it is difficult to keep in mind all th hundreds of published cases—they become addicted to a theory < nd publish the theory, and then there are a few stray cases that don’t quite fit. There is an enormous temptation to make the stray case: fit in Procrustean fashion in the scheme once set up. You know, the only thing we can do is what is done in all science, and that is to keep experimenting with interpretations until we find the one that really squares with all our facts without any forcing, And we plainly have not yet got an interpretation which squar r meets all the facts. III Theories of Spontaneous Cases But I thought I should tell you about three of the theories of spontaneous experiences. They all deal rather heavily with telepathy, although they all make some place for precognitive experiences and they all make a place for crisis apparitions and hauntings. The first is the theory of Frederic Myers, the first great systematist in psychical research whose extraordinary two-volume work was published just fifty years ago, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death,'* which contains hundreds of well-organized cases_ documenting the various categories which have been described. Now, Myers, with special reference to death coincidences and crisis appari- tions (for example, seeing the image of a person with his clothing 4B. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, 2 Vols., Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1903. 7 The Importance of Spontaneous Cases 9 drenched and dripping water at the ee ve Base pe as i is actually drowning), is particularly padi of “what ‘the dying person contributes to our errs Sometimes the impression is as if clairvoyant rather a z = ; in the sense that the person who sees the dying man — Pyne? y response from him ; the dying man doesn’t seem to turn i ll to him. | Take the much-quoted case arenes ~~ i aged IS ood sega duties, suddenly sees her brother trip | Of deaeanion shortly after he had been tripped by a a on : harbor boat in Chicago.'* In these instances, the pinerig a ink the receiver, the percipient, is, SO to speak, oui = vee : something happening. But in an extraordinary number o reapers there is a more direct contact, as if the person meen could in some way be reaching out or trying to make a contact. vom There are actually Se ei 3 aa a Eh eee tried to project himself at a dl : : hime that we typically happens in these ay he berated who is undergoing the oT ctacie ef he : ee sgh Levee ipient is located. In particular, pi a gates where two or three or more people sec - pa rition. The striking fact, you know, 1s that in collective eae Bae there is not a mechanical carbon-copy process by w . the individuals receive the same impression, On ee tele. sees it appropriately in terms of the Spiers ; dbs 8 i $ have read about, If you think over cases you Te ee ize how this makes sense. Each person gi 1 vee as if there were a physical object to be seen from his own int.!® weit Cally is happening then, says Myers, is that ee undergoing the crisis is invading the perciptent s — oo Myers falls back on the conception of a metetheria — pee A which is not quite space, but another kind of ar dee oe But to all intents and purposes, he 1s arguing | i a scenoohe yourself through space at the time of your own dea’ : i n other people. . 4 gag 1 think one could say that no great pce val Rae theory, which might account for many cases, was made unt! 15 Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, “On the Evidence for Clairvoyance,” Proc. S.P.R., Vol. VII, 1891-1892, pp. 32-35. ; ko the -apoesibion 16 Tyrrell has particularly developed the point that fie oe ee F i fi the light just as a solid object gi cehected in pyre just 3 a solid object would be, although actually can pass one’s hand through the image and there is every evidence that it is not a physical reality.

98 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research of the systematic thinking which Mr. Tyrrell had to do when he asked to deliver the Myers Memorial Lecture in 1942. He took this job very seriously. As a matter of fact, he produced a volume of ovel 120 pages. It is not just a little lecture, but is an amazingly clo thought, brilliant, integrated, all-around consideration of the prob of apparitions. If you really want some exciting, serious reading psychical research; if you really want something that will make think and will give you lots of live, interesting, and well-authenticated cases, I cannot urge upon you anything more important than Mr. Tyrrell’s book, Apparitions. Now what, according to Tyrrell, are the problems that have to be taken into account? In the first place, there is the fact that the impression obeys psycho- logical laws and doesn't follow physical laws as we know them. The structure of an apparition is determined to a very large degree by our knowledge of how people and things behave. We tend to cast the impression into a reasonable form. And if there are, as I said, several people present, each one will use the dynamics of his own basic ways” of perceiving in giving structure to this impression. Moreover, the different feeling-tones of respect, affection, fear, and so on, toward a person are registered just as if the living entity were still present. Can this be explained on the basis of telepathy? Can this be ex- plained by saying, as some have done, that the telepathic image repre- sents a certain force projected from the brain of the person under- going the crisis? Or can we say, as F. C, S. Schiller did, “Apparitions are the dreams of the dead” ? This might seem plausible, insofar as the apparition may occur many months or years after the time of death. — Can we actually do this, when we have to face the fact, documented — by dozens and dozens of cases, that it takes work by the individual perceiver to produce the apparition, each person producing the kind of apparition that makes sense to him? Suppose I have a dream of driving up a steep road to Walnut Grove in California. You haven't happened to be in Walnut Grove. If I try to convey this to you, I won't try to throw a sort of motion picture impression of it into the mind of each one of you. But you will actively try to understand me; you will ask: “Did you mean this?” You will remember similar places where you have been, and each of you will construct a picture of Walnut Grove based upon my words, poor as they are, but each of you will construct a different picture, each in his own way. This is very different from mere photographic repro- duction. Now this is just what Tyrrell finds as he analyzes apparitions. He gives, I think, unimpeachable evidence that it takes not only work on The Importance of Spontaneous Cases 99 of the person initiating the impression but work, integration, ceaceatil activity on the part of every person receiving it. That is not a mechanical process of passive reception. ; rae oP ell goes on to show that this is not done consciously. ¥ cies seis, but unconsciously. This is true of all Aa both normal and paranormal. Suppose I show you a ine a match box, and I say: “Which one 1s nearer? You instan y solve the problem. You don’t do this by figuring out the size hs a retinal impression or the amount of effort taken to focus the ~ ’ and all the things which indicate that the watch would have to be so far and the match box so far. You do this instantly, or as we say, intuitively. A ic of beautiful experiments has been going on at Dartmouth College and at Princeton University and elsewhere on the ways in which we are able to make these distant intuitive jane pi that we can appropriately gauge the distance and size and s ee an object. The task takes us months and years to acquire, as el es see if you watch an infant gradually learning how to ee = various cues which are received through the sense organs from outer world. Tyrrell shows that we interpret these apparitions in the Aenea ous and intuitive way that you and I use when we perceive b a . person is angry or frightened. It is an amazingly complicat “ mostly unconscious rather than conscious integration. This sé <a he means by mid-level functioning. The process is not wrens ? y the end-result is conscious, by which you instantly an, a Bs certain person is happy oF frightened. Tyrrell says, then, that ye j perception of an apparition is not like the impression on a Pp : A graphic plate; you use your own personality when you are ao Vv . in experiencing an occurrence; and therefore it' represents, not ju a conscious impression, but something much deeper. Finally, he goes on to show that there is in all this a sort of Sore to terms, a sort of a compromise between the jam aagg p> “ person receiving the communication. He uses the analogy © eet os an effect across through the device of the stage. He speaks bs ie producer and the stage carpenter. In this case, you realize sp : producer has the fundamental basic personality function © sane municating to another person. But he may not be able to eT thes at a conscious level; he may be able only to register upon t . : - person the fact, let us say, that he is undergoing a img] n percipient instead of seeing him may get an impression, let ees of disaster, and later may see a tomb, or may see flames or ce ; ~ characteristic of the percipient or of the crisis, not a mechant

100 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research impression from the agent. The stage carpenter is the mid-level fune- tion, the deep unconscious process by which the message is converted into an impression. In addition to Myers’ theory and Tyrrell’s theory we have one other theory to consider and its proponent is here with us this evening: Professor Hart, who will talk to you about a fifth-dimensional con- ception of the way in which the paranormal represents an integrated personality function which goes beyond the ordinary three space dimensions and the single time-dimension that we ordinarily use in science.!7 I would say that this also is one of the attempts to go beyond the earlier hypotheses which have been tested, which have been found to be good, but which don’t seem completely to cover the facts. To give an illustration of something not covered by any theory of spon- taneous cases: the celebrated cases reported by Pagenstecher in Mexico to which Dr. Walter Franklin Prince gave so much atten- tion.'"* They involve a very complicated series of catastrophes, per- ceived under clairvoyant conditions, as if the individual clairvoyant were able to get out of the ordinary time-space world and find there a way to another time-space point at which a catastrophe had occurred —as if there were a sort of moving bead which can get outside of the ordinary firm structure of this world and tune in at different points in time-space, Now, we have, therefore, what we might call a pretty good, but not an ideal theory, as far as we know. We are working constantly to_ try to get a better theory in the sense that it will explain more spon- taneous cases, and in the sense that it may so deepen our understand- ing of human personality and its relationship to other persons and things of this world that it may enable us to develop a better philosophy of man. On the other hand, it may help us in the establishment of experimental studies through which we may be able to find out more exactly what is involved. In other words, we may be able to do better laboratory work if we have more and better spontaneous cases. We have lots of cases, but we always need a new angle: a case that teaches us something we haven't been able to get before; a case that helps us to decide between different theories and to go on from where we are. Here is a place where we have to pause in terms of a very serious 17 Hornell Hart, “The Psychic Fifth Dimension,” Journat A.S.P.R., Vol. XLVI, 1953, pp. 3-32 and (with associates) “The Psychic Fifth Dimension, II," Journat A.S.P.R., Vol. XLVI, pp. 47-79. 18 Gustav Pa echer, “Past Events Seership: A Study in Psychometry” (edited by Dr. Walter Franklin Prince), Proc. A.S.P.R., Vol. XVI, 1922. See also “Psychometrical Experiments with Senora Maria Reyes de Z.," Prac. A.S.P.R., Vol. XV, 1921, pp. 189-314. The Importance of Spontaneous Cases 101 estion that can always be raised, which I think was first well- foeauiated by Margaret Pegram Reeves.!” She argued, I think, vi effectively, that there is a basically different kind of dynamics involv in experimental cases and in the spontaneous cases. That is to say, the telepathy or the precognition that you can get in the laboratory A different, partly because the motivation 1s less intense. Perhaps situation may seem somewhat artificial. Basically, she says, it is not quite the same thing. You are calling into play a different level of the personality, because in the experimental case, you cannot produce crises in the laboratory. You have to respect the individuality of the people you are working with. You get merely the desire to cooperate, the desire to do the job. The result is that the symbolism which is used and the method of working are at the conscious level. It isn’t deep-level work. In fact, she intimates toward the end of her paper that maybe the basic dynamics worked out to explain laboratory telepathy may not be adequate, and may not give a complete —— of the dynamics of spontaneous telepathy, which springs from a deeper level. - "eats is true, then how are we to respond to Dr. Rhine's belief that the value of spontaneous cases lies in suggesting hypotheses which then can be tested in the laboratory? This doesn’t quite ring true to me. I would think that there were certain instances _— spontaneous cases would indeed lead to hypotheses that could tested in the laboratory. But remember the analogy that I ase few minutes ago with geology and astronomy. I tried to make the point that there is a definite place in science for the —, arrangements of events which are not under experimental control. And I firmly believe that psychical research will be able to aS systematic and intelligible picture of what happens in the deep- eve interactions of human beings, under the heads of telepathy, clairvoy- ance, precognition, whether we happen to be smart enough to i ment these things in the laboratory or not. If we can document t in this way, fine. I don’t think that this means that the only purpose in spontaneous cases lies in the preparation of laboratory tests. IV Individuality i hat human Now, of course, the whole picture so far suggests that | personality is a generic universal thing, that you will recognize the presence of human personality anywhere, in the same way that you ~ i Parapsychology,” 19 M ret Pegram Reeves, “A Topological Approach to jouma ASER, Vol. XXXVITI, 1944, pp. 72-82.

102 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Researel would recognize a walnut or a spruce tree. But we differ more from each other than spruce trees do. We are dynamically more complex in our individuality than spruce trees. And we begin to see as we study the dynamics of apparitions, precognitive dreams, and so on, that the qualitative differences between people are very great. is the sort of thing that suggests to me that as we gather more and more cases, we shall contribute to personality study, not only in the way that Mr. Tyrrell suggests—throwing light upon the deep uncon- scious sources of power, capacity to live, to make contacts with other people, which belong to all humanity—but also by throwing light upon those complex and subtle factors which make one person more able to convey information than another, and another person more able to receive impressions than another. If you go through the reports the English Society has published, and those which Mrs. Dale has published for us, I think you will be impressed with a sort of chronic individualism and the fact that a person who has recurrent experiences reveals himself in his experi- ences. You begin to realize that Miss Bishop,?” who wrote a long series of accounts of precognitive dreams, was probably not a person who would be equally good, let us say, at perception of crisis appari- tions. Each person seems to betray also qualitatively a certain kind of symbolism as in the case of the record I read you from the woman in Oklahoma, So that along with our understanding of the nature of this mid-level or unconscious contact we make with each other, we have the possibility of understanding individuality. I think it is an extraordinary thing that although we have had psychical research with us for three-quarters of a century, we know very little about individuality in relation to these phenomena. We can talk about telepathy quite a long while. We can talk about apparitions quite a long while. But who sees them and why? How explain the fact that certain people in this audience have had precognitive dreams at times, and that others have not? Or that some may have seen an apparition, while others have not? Some people haven’t experienced either of these things but they have had uncanny hunches and other unex- plained experiences. There is a very rich field here for the study of human individuality. That is the final answer that I will make to people who say: “With all this stuff that you people have published, why do you want more cases?" In summary, we have three aims: first, to test how far the prin- ciples suggested by Myers, Tyrrell, Hart, and others are right; 20 G. M, Bishop, “Foreknowledge in Dreams," Journal S.P.R., Vol. XXXII, 1941, pp. 50-59. The Importance of Spontaneous Cases 103 i i . and third, to under- derstand their dynamics more fully ; an ; sary hee individuality more fully in the course of these studies. Vv A New Study of Spontancous Experiences i ehensive study of spon- t is the reason we are starting a compr t haces deceiteces at the American Society for Psychical are eb A number of us had been thinking 8 years ie gr re = come, Almost simultaneously, Mr. tevens, i sane apts came to the idea recently that it might be possible } a aeeeale study of the phenomena I have described—cases — to do with precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, oe ingen ns i i —all the spontaneous cases ings, physical phenomena: ; eg i bout which, fundamentally, same see if you follow our JOURNAL, @ eT am sie ic rules are to be laid down that we have in the . rule betude (1) emphasis upon well-described cases; (2) emphasis, sg ssible, on recent cases; (3) emphasis on cases where there is or frmation. But there is no final, absolute, nd iat tatty i the cases will be in the hands of a commuttee, pica ae beyond what it is today. ieivony i _ been a pioneer in this area, and, together w! : sd re signal ronteibnitionts to the mispigagats 3 ae He cases, iversity to be wi ; has come up from Duke University Oe aay will serve as Chairman. Professor Ducasse 0 oe oe ber. Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Dale, and I are tl nel se Wel shall all be working on the problem of collecting and errs spontaneous cases; trying to make sense, — be get ay ae a i d, as I said at the nning, trying to test hypotheses. And, as I Mpls i ho is interested to help us pe gutted tat eng tribute?” Here is some- imes the question is: “What can we contri ? re is sie contributé. You can help gather cases. apa more important. And we will try to explain to you how it is = mee Now, I would like to ask Professor Hornell Hart to take ov for a few minutes. a hrelwine Dr. Murphy's lecture, nga seep creme i nt of his theories bearing on the process pinay footnote 17). He fee sini a Raber i i chical experiences to those present, w' I ocenated oot i occasion. A more res nrerge Degparesy pie n ; ‘sed to those whose answers warrant urther i 3 Sook forward to Professor Hart's report on the results fn ae bage tionnaires in a lecture he has been invited to give tot y the autumn.—Ed. }